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It's been less than two weeks since the
movie world was rocked by James Gunn's removal as the main creative
force behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. By now you've all
probably read a dozen different think pieces and articles detailing
the reasons why and arguing whether or not it was the right call by
Disney's Alan Horn, so I will do my best not to rehash the same
arguments here, but I do want to talk through my personal thoughts
about whether or not it was the right choice a bit now that the dust
has settled a little bit.

Horn has unquestionably been one of the
strongest executives in Disney's history. Under his watch Marvel was
brought into the fold (remember Iron Man and Captain America were
Paramount films), Star Wars was bought and relaunched, Pixar was
fully integrated into the company and the live-action remakes of
classic Disney movies have been raking in money hand over fist. The
studio has grown into an entertainment behemoth with all the
positives and negatives associated with that.

An example of the positive side is the
money the studio was willing to invest in a relatively unknown comic
book property spearheaded by a writer/director most known for
offensive humor-filled horror just because he was backed by Marvel's
Kevin Feige. The negative side being how quickly they dropped the
very same guy at the first sign of controversy, even after he made
1.6 billion dollars for the studio with just two movies.

I disagree with Horn's decision to part
ways with Gunn, but I'm still trying to understand it. The biggest
deal of his reign as chairman is this pending merger with Fox. It not
only takes out a chief rival, it also sets Disney Studios up for the
world of tomorrow by giving them a huge amount of diverse IP to
utilize with their subscription-based streaming service.

The timing of this decision can't be
coincidence. Just a week before the shareholder vote to approve the
merger right wing pundits started spamming the internet with Gunn's
offensive joke tweets from 6-10 years ago. With a deal this big any
and every little thing can screw it up, so I have to imagine taking a
calm, measured approach to this potential scandal was less of a
priority than making it go away as quickly as possible.

That feels right to me, although I'll
be the first to admit I don't know the daily ins and outs of Disney's
executive life.

So, he made the call and fired Gunn
from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which was written and expected
to go into production possibly as early as the end of this year or
the beginning of 2019.

But now what? That's the question.

The shareholders have voted to approve
the merger and Disney is now facing more pressure from the
entertainment industry over their decision to fire Gunn than they
ever did from Mike Cernovich's mobs demanding Gunn's head. Actors,
directors, producers and nearly all the entertainment journalists
have all spoken out about how this is, frankly, bullshit.

Just today the entire Guardians of the
Galaxy cast put out a joint public statement calling for Gunn to be
reinstated. And when I say “entirety” I mean it. Chris Pratt, Zoe
Saldana, Dave Bautista (who has been the most vocal about this from
the day Disney fired Gunn), Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Sean Gunn, Vin Diesel, Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker all signed a measured, passionate
defense of Gunn.

Would all these people be willing to
band together and refuse to work on the next Marvel movie if Disney
doesn't reconsider? What about refusing to do any promotion for the
next Avengers movie? Maybe, maybe not, but either way it's a big deal
in this day and age for these high profile people to take a stand
against what they view as an injustice, knowing damn well it puts
them all in the crosshairs of the people organizing these obviously
politically motivated, targeted attacks.

Even someone as inconsequential as me
got targeted over my support of Gunn, with dozens of random Twitter
users calling me a pedophile apologist because I dared defend a guy
who once made bad jokes about the subject 10 years ago. I can't
imagine what Chris Pratt's social media is going to be like in the
wake of this.

I don't claim to know James Gunn's
heart. I've met the guy a few times over the last 10 years and get
along pretty well with him on a movie geek (and cigar appreciator)
level. I first interviewed him for his great horror comedy SLITHER
and have talked to him a few times, both on and off the record, in
the years since. I may not know him well, but my impression of the
man is the same I get from reading the Guardians cast's letter or the
description of him I see repeated over and over again from people who
have worked with him.

Yes, he's got a dark sense of humor.
That's obvious from his filmography. You don't start your career in
Troma if you're a Sunday school teacher. You don't get your big break
writing a hard R-rated zombie movie if you're scared of crossing
lines. You don't make a movie like SUPER if you have any qualms about
offending people to get a message across.

Beneath that humor, though, is heart.
The message of the Guardians movies isn't to be cynical assholes that
like to shock people. Quite the opposite, actually. It's about
shedding that devil-may-care persona and being able to fully love.
It's about the strength of the family you choose, not necessarily the
family you're born into.

Movies aren't made by a single person,
but it's clear that without Gunn's voice Guardians of the Galaxy
wouldn't have been the lightning in a bottle experience it was.
That's why, creatively, the cast and many entertainment reporters
feel like Disney is cutting its nose off to spite its face here and
why they're imploring the studio to reconsider.

James Cameron took a very long break
after the exhausting production and release of Titanic. People forget
now, but the common thought in Hollywood was that Cameron was working
on a Heaven's Gate-level bomb. Too much money was being spent on a
romantic historical romance, they said. The audience just wasn't
going to show up. Then the movie made two billion dollars.

It was twelve years before Cameron made
another movie and that next movie was almost Alita: Battle Angel. In
fact, he was developing it alongside what would become Avatar and
went back and forth between the two on which would be his Titanic
followup. At the end of the day his script for Alita was just way too
long and Cameron couldn't manage everything he wanted to do in just
one movie, so he shifted focus to Avatar and once again made box
office history.

Cut to 2015. Robert Rodriguez was
having lunch with Cameron and asked him what projects he worked on
that never happened. Cameron mentioned Alita and Rodriguez asked to
read it, all 180+ pages of it.

Rodriguez was immediately enamored with
the story, based on the Japanese manga, of an android girl
discovering her history and deciding on whether she was going to be a
force for good in the world or the brutal weapon she was constructed
to be.

So Rodriguez came back to Cameron with
an interesting request: Could he edit the script? He was clear that
he didn't intend to rewrite it. He said he could edit the material
already there down to a shootable version and Cameron could do
whatever he wanted with the result... Re-develop it for himself,
throw it out, whatever.

Cameron said sure, go for it and four
months later Rodriguez sent him the drastically shorter script and
when Cameron and his longtime producing partner Jon Landau read it
they were astonished because while the script was shorter by a third
they couldn't tell what had been snipped. Everything they wanted to
say with this story was there. The action set pieces were still there
and still thrilling, the tale of a girl transitioning into womanhood
was still at the forefront. It was the movie Cameron had in mind,
just more concise.

He was so impressed with the work
Rodriguez did he figured he had found the man to actually make the
movie a reality. Once again Avatar took priority for Cameron who was
neck deep in all the sequels he was writing, so he tasked Rodriguez
with directing Alita. Cameron was always a phone call away to answer
questions and Cameron's right hand man, Jon Landau, was always at
Rodriguez's side.

You'd think that could be suffocating
for a filmmaker who has defined his career by getting his complete
vision on the screen doing as much of the movie as he could. From
operating his own camera to writing, producing, composing, editing
and even doing his own VFX, Rodriguez has a reputation for being a
lone wolf, creatively speaking.

But in this case his vision was to make
this film as much like a James Cameron movie as possible. He
underlined this to me when I visited the Austin set of Alita: Battle
Angel last year. He said he didn't want to make a Troublemaker
Studios movie, he wanted to make a Lightstorm movie, which is why all
the footage from the trailers look a bit different from what you
expect from a Robert Rodriguez joint. Lots of CG and dynamic action,
yes, but also huge practical sets and a little bit more breathing
room when it comes to the editing and character moments.

Wrongly or rightly Rodriguez's style
has become synonymous with greenscreen filmmaking pretty much since
Sin City. But that's definitely not his approach this time out.

The result is an approach that
hopefully takes the strengths of both Lightstorm and Troublemaker and
melds them into something new and unique. The integration was so
important to Cameron that he even had a sign put up at his California
offices that said “Troublemaker West,” and Rodriguez answered by
putting a sign up in his Austin studios that said “Lightstorm
South.”

A full year of preproduction went into
designing this crazy world. James Cameron's art team worked hand in
hand with Rodriguez's Austin team and came up with designs that are
both faithful to the look and feel from the original Manga while also
being something that worked for the big screen.

In the Battle Angel world cybernetic
augmentation is the norm. Sometimes it's slight... a hand, a foot, an
arm. Sometimes it's major. There's one character, played by Jackie
Earle Haley, that is pretty much just a human head on a gargantuan 8
foot tall robot brute body.

The design team took that year and
cranked out many variations of cybernetically enhanced people. I saw
art of an old man playing a double-necked guitar with robotic arms
that had two hands, one for each neck of the guitar, for instance.
You've seen the trailers by now, so you've seen a glimpse at how far
they've gone to populate this world.

The majority of the film takes place in
Iron City, a poor slum city that lives off the discards of the rich,
exclusive, protected floating city above them. This is where
Christoph Waltz's Dr. Ido finds a broken Alita (played entirely in
motion capture by Rosa Salazar) in a junkyard. Something about her
moves him and what he does to help her might give a hint at what
exactly he feels for this person.

She awakens with a new body constructed
with loving care and attention to detail. Floral patterns are
intricately carved with silver metallic flourishes. It's a small
body, built for a child. We find out Dr. Ido built this for his sick
daughter, with the intention of giving her back her mobility and
freedom, but he was too late. In short he begins to view this
stranger as the daughter he never had.

This is a story of second chances. Ido
has a second chance at being a father and Alita has a chance to be a
different kind of person. She may not remember her past, but her past
remembers her and it's not exactly filled with rose pedals and puppy
dogs.

For the set visit I was walked around
Iron City, which was built on Troublemaker's backlot, just across the
fence from where I sit typing this over at Rooster Teeth's Austin
Studios offices, as a matter of fact. On screen the city will tower
dozens of stories tall. They didn't go that far in reality, but they
did build multiple connected city blocks up two stories. CG will take
care of the rest, but the foundation will be real. Every wall,
window, door, sign, road, step will be real so it won't just look
like actors composited against a CG backdrop.

Iron City had a very Rodriguez feel.
This place looks like futuristic Desperado. Heavy Latino influence,
but mixed with a handful of other cultures, especially Asian, to
create a new blend that's lived-in, patched together with every
available resource and feels like it's covered in dust.

The only filming I got to witness with
my own eyes was a crowd scene as spectators cheer and boo the players
of a brutal but popular sport called Motorball. If you've ever seen
the James Caan Rollerball, think of it that way, but with way more
robot augmentations that allow for some crazier games.

Christoph Waltz was in the stands
watching on nervously. Alita is taking part and the deck is stacked
against her. While in the stands Waltz recognizes some of her
competitors as assassins and tries to warn her that this isn't just a
game and her life is in danger.

One thing I noticed is that most of the
extras weren't dressed super futuristically. This isn't Blade Runner
where everybody is wearing plastic ties and holding glowing
umbrellas. There was a punk vibe to those in the stands, but still
pretty modern-looking.

In short everything I saw and
personally experienced felt every measure the combination of James
Cameron and Robert Rodriguez I was promised by producer Jon Landau at
the beginning of the visit. They're taking some wild swings with this
one, particularly in the design of Alita herself.

Much has already
been made about the giant anime eyes. Some hate it, some love it,
some are just perplexed by it. It's weird and so will a bunch of this
movie, but that's usually the secret to Cameron's success. Giant CG
blue cat people was weird as hell, too, but then became the biggest
movie in the world for a decade.

There's no guarantee this movie will
hit anywhere near Avatar levels. In many ways it's a harder sell and
the filmmakers seem to know this.

When asked if this movie was being
planned as the start of a franchise or a complete one off, Landau
gave a real interesting answer. He said they didn't want to have the
hubris to assume a sequel, but they wanted to be smart and have some
pieces in place for further films. That's the reason for the slight
change in the title. The original manga is called Battle Angel Alita.
The reason for calling it Alita: Battle Angel makes it easier to
title potential sequels, like Alita: Fallen Angel, etc.

I myself can't make any kind of final
judgment call on what we'll be getting come December 21st,
but I can say whatever the final product ends up being it wasn't
haphazardly thrown together. It has two insanely creative filmmakers
joining forces with all the strengths of their individual teams and
some of the best effects houses in the world to tell a futuristic
action adventure with actual time spent on character development.

Anyway, I hope that gives you guys a
little peek behind the curtain at what's been going on with Alita:
Battle Angel. Thanks for reading along and thanks to Fox and
Troublemaker for letting me wander the streets of Iron City and
letting all you guys know about what I saw.

Summer movie season is in full swing
right now. You can still find at least three superhero movies in
theaters as well as a big, dumb action movie staring The Rock and the
latest Mission: Impossible film hits screens in a little over a week.
But that doesn't mean there aren't smaller, more meaningful movies
out there.

One is coming out this weekend called
Blindspotting. I saw this film at Sundance and raved about it back
then. Now you have a chance to see what I was talking about. Starring
Hamilton's Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar and Jasmine
Cephas Jones, this is one of those everything movies. It'll make you
laugh, it'll make you cry, it'll make your butthole clench in pure
tension. You know, everything.

Blindspotting is about a man in the final days of his parole who witnesses a policeman shooting an unarmed man. He's traumatized by the incident, but can't speak out for fear of revealing that violated his parole. At the same time his crazy best friend isn't helping matters by constantly acting as the well-intentioned, but bad influence in his life.

It's a great film and I was super
excited to sit down with the two leads, Daveed Diggs and Rafael
Casal, alongside their director Carlos Lopez Estrada to talk about
how this film about friendship was actually born out of friendship as well as just how great their supporting cast is and how they struck an authentic balance between real world issues and escapism entertainment.

It's a good chat. Enjoy!

Eric Vespe: Hey, guys. So, I saw the
movie at Sundance and flipped for it. It spoke to me in a way I
wasn't quite expecting and I think it's because of the way the humor
of the film pushes the narrative. It's a movie with deadly serious
content, but first and foremost it's almost a buddy comedy. I cared
about the stakes of the movie because I cared about the friendship
between you guys. Was that your way into the story?

Carlos Lopez Estrada: The movie is
based on friendship. It sounds like a corny thing to say, but it's
true. The movie's a result of the friendship between Rafa and Daveed
for... how many years?

Daveed Diggs: Hella years.

Rafael Casal: (laughs) Hella years.
We're coming up on two decades.

Carlos Lopez Estrada: Then there was a
friendship between Daveed and myself. It started professionally and
then...

Daveed Diggs: It became romantic.

Carlos Lopez Estrada: It wasn't
romantic, it was just physical. (laughs) Then through Daveed I met
Rafa. It's oversimplifying the process a little, but a lot of people
came to (the movie) because of friendship. (Producers) Keith Calder
and Jess Wu have been working with these guys for 9 years as well. A
lot of the actors are either friends or friends of friends of people
who these guys have worked with. It is a family endeavor and I'm glad
to hear that energy translates when you watch the movie. Calling this
movie a passion project is a serious understatement. They could
probably tell you a little more about the real genesis.

Daveed Diggs: (to Rafa) You said
something great a little while ago about humor and male
relationships... about how men interact with each other.

Rafael Casal: Just say it's my quote,
but Daveed will say it.

Daveed Diggs: Rafa says that one of the
ways that men stay friends with each other is by making jokes. That's
what we do. We're always sort of covering up...

Rafael Casal: It's the barrel roll out
of tension. We have two main emotions that men are socially accepted
to express. It's anger and humor. Those are the two conditioned ways
to fluctuate.

Really the movie runs the way heterosexual male
friendship tends to toggle. It's devoid of too much talk about
feelings and it's very much humor-humor-humor until it boils up and
because of that I think the characteristic of the film I love the
most is just how much they try to keep bringing humor into it until
it's completely impossible. Even in the end it's Miles' final barrel
roll that gets us to a place of hope between the two of them, by
trying to get them to laugh. That's the survival nature of
friendship.

Daveed Diggs: It sets up this thing
where you can't trust humor any more. It's not enough. But then the
final statement is pretty much if we acknowledge that we both changed
we can still make jokes.

Eric Vespe: I relate to that a lot.
It's also important for audiences to know, too. You can tell people
Blindspotting has great messages about gentrification and police
brutality and the unfairness of the parole system and their eyes
might glaze over. It might sound like homework. But if you can tell
them it's a funny movie and you're going to connect with the
characters that changes the conversation that gets people to give it
a shot.

Daveed Diggs: The buddy comedy in a
world that won't let it be one... the reason that we say that
sentence so much is because that sentence, and when you see the movie
you'll get this, is to me the definition of what “Blindspotting”
is. You say “a buddy comedy in a world that won't let it be one”
and all people hear is the “buddy comedy” part and the second
half is lost. You don't entirely know what it means, so your eyes
float to “buddy comedy.”

The first press we ever got was “Rafael
Casal and Daveed Diggs are doing a buddy comedy set in Oakland.”
Yeah, we gave you the full sentence, but that's where your eye went.

The in is that it's a buddy comedy, but
it doesn't ignore the world that it exists in and it's that world
that won't let it be one. The inherent seriousness of the time we're
in gives you the buddy comedy, but puts it in the world that we're
in.

The world just unfolds as it is, which
is why I never throw out the gun control and violence themes or even
really police shootings. We're just now starting to add that because
we're being told to. (laughs) We're being told it's helpful.

Eric Vespe: Speaking of, your character
witnesses a police shooting and the guy playing the officer is Ethan
Embry. He's so damn good in this thing. He's a deeply flawed
character, but not a one-dimensional bad guy. I felt I was
empathizing with him and I never in a million years would have
thought I'd do that with a person in his position.

Rafael Casal: The amazing thing about
empathy is all you actually have to do is make them human. You'll
forgive so many flaws in a character's personality or political
position as long as they feel full and human.

Daveed Diggs: And I don't think we're
even asking for forgiveness. It's just that you can sort of
understand it. What we don't see is him over there and laughing and
high-fiving two weeks after he shot a kid. His life probably sucks.
You don't have to let him off the hook for being poorly trained and
for shooting somebody because he was scared of a person running away
from him. You don't get off the hook for that. You don't get brownie
points for that, but also your life is probably pretty shitty.

From our perspective (Ethan's
character) couldn't reconcile with his wife after that. There's no
turning back from that. The great thing about Ethan as an actor is
that he made that whole movie in his head. He had the whole story of
that officer in his head.

Rafael Casal: The other side of this
film.

Daveed Diggs: And he asked us a ton of
questions about it. We didn't write that into the script, so he came
to us and asked us questions. Where is this guy from? Does he have
other infractions?

Rafael Casal: Do you think he came from
the military? He gave it that much thought. I don't think at any
point Ethan was trying to create a character that he thought was
morally right. He just wanted a three-dimensional human being who is
also a product of his surroundings and biases.

Daveed Diggs: I don't think Ethan likes
him very much!

Rafael Casal: But I think he got him,
which is nearly impossible when you read this script and invest in
the main characters. To be able to find a sincere way into that
officer...

Daveed Diggs: It's a thing we asked of
everybody involved in this film. So much of the focus is necessarily
on us, but it was really important to have all these characters who
were fully realized and felt like they had their own lives. So
everybody had to do that work, without necessarily the lines to
support it. Jasmine (Cephas Jones) came to the Bay a little bit early
and just hung out. She's soooo New York.

Rafael Casal: She's so Brooklyn! She
was there for two days. She came to the Warriors parade...

Daveed Diggs: It happened to be when
the Warriors won the title.

Rafael Casal: She hung out with two of
the women who here character is based on and within two hours had the
speech pattern down and was just walking around with it. They did her
hair and I just kept forgetting that was Jasmine. It was magic.

Eric Vespe: Janina (Gavankar) is great,
too. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when she's doing your
hair. It's the most romantic not-romantic scene ever. It's romantic
in that these are two people who get each other and care for each
other, but they're not at a place where they can become an item
again.

Daveed Diggs: We auditioned here by
seeing if she could braid hair. She can't, so that's an incredible
acting job. You'll see she focuses on the back of the head. (laughs)

Carlos Lopez Estrada: I think Janina is
one of those casting stories that I'll always remember because she
came in to read towards the later end of the process. We had seen a
lot of actors, some very, very talented people came in to read, and
we were having a hard time making a decision. It was an important
role. Then she walked into the room and did a handful of things that
no one had done and I think understood the depth of the character in
ways that we hadn't even fully grasped.

We had a conversation with her about
the script and about how she related to it being an Indian woman and
understanding how minorities feel. It's just one of those things I'll
never forget. She walked out of the room and we all just looked at
each other and said, “Wow. How could we not work with this woman?”

Daveed Diggs: She taught us things
about Val in the audition.

Rafael Casal: She totally changed the
character.

Daveed Diggs: There's that moment at
the end of that scene after their hug she just said “Okay, bye”
and walked out. No one else had played it that way. There was always
this longing pathos thing, but she did it that way and I was like
“... okay.” I was reading with her.

Rafael Casal: She just cut the scene
off!

Daveed Diggs: All of us were like
“That's how that scene was supposed to go! Shit.” It gave her so
much more agency than I think even we were giving to that character.
The best of our abilities we were still two dudes trying to write
women and she came in and was like “This is how I would do it in
this moment.”

Carlos Lopez Estrada: She's not like
Val, but in many ways she is. She'd come up to all three of us and we
would give her direction and she'd say “Actually, I'm not sure if I
agree with that” and we'd have these really interesting
conversations.

Rafael Casal: She really took Val from
us.

Daveed Diggs: Thank goodness.

Rafael Casal: She'd be like “Val's
this person. I know her better than you, so we're going to do it this
way.” We were like “Okay!”

Eric Vespe: It's a tough character
because that archetype could come across as naggy.

Daveed Diggs: It could come across as
naggy, I know! It's tricky. There was an edit where we failed her,
really. There was an early edit where she came off that way and it
wasn't because of her performance, it was because we were choosing
the wrong shots. For time we cut a bunch of things out, so we had to
go back put more of her in. She gives this wonderfully nuanced
performance with so much empathy in it, but for time we cut a lot of
those moments and we were watching it going “We have to put that
back.”

Rafael Casal: There's the balance of
sweet and stern and she gave us so many different takes of each one
in each scene. Compiling that, you have to have just the right amount
of Val's sweetness and kindness that you understand why her and
Collin were together, but also just enough coldness that you get that
this isn't a happily ever after thing.

Eric Vespe: Absolutely. I love the
movie and I think a lot of people are going to love the movie as
well. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

The movie's out in select theaters this
weekend and goes wide on July 27th. If you like good things, go watch it!

My history with the modern DCEU is a little rocky, but I'm by no means a DC hater. Growing up the only good comic book movies were DC films! Superman and Superman II, the two Tim Burton Batman movies. Hell, I even liked Supergirl as cheesy as that was.

The Dark Knight was my favorite movie the year it came out and I still hold it up as a masterpiece of popcorn entertainment.

DC is just having some trouble finding its footing in the Marvel era. It's a tough road to hoe for Warner Bros. We've seen so much of Batman and Superman, so how do they both give us what we want and also something new?

There's no easy answer to that question, but I think the key lies more in their less-familiar characters. Wonder Woman has been all over pop culture, but she never got her moment in the sun quite like she did in her own standalone movie. Patty Jenkins embraced the good-hearted Diana and also made her a badass who will stand up and fight for those that can't. It was more than just "cool moments."

Could James Wan work similar magic for Aquaman? I'm optimistic, not because I have any deep love or nostalgia for the character (I don't), but I like Wan as a filmmaker. He's got a great eye and distinctive voice.

While I think they blew it pretty hardcore with Batman V Superman and Justice League, I still hold out hope DC rights the ship.

So, when I share some images of the internet joshing the new Aquaman poster know it comes from a place of good fun. Here's the official one:

The movie could be amazing, but that poster is pretty silly. Even DC fans are making fun of it. Looks like a photoshoot at the local aquarium. People have pointed out that the big mean shark on the right side of the poster is a stock image that you've seen a million times before, but hey, short cuts happen.

The internet isn't as forgiving as I am, though. Here are a few of my favorite instant photoshop jobs I saw today:

Alright, the last one is kinda mean and snarky, but it made me laugh.

One nice thing I'll say about this poster though is that it shows a lighter, more fun vibe. I've seen a few clips and unfinished effects shots from this movie at various Conventions over the last 12 months or so and Wan isn't shying away from making this weird as hell, which is why I'm still hopeful we'll get something special out of this movie when it premieres this holiday season.

In the meantime I'm sure we'll be getting a new trailer soon since they're going to be doing their big Hall H presentation at Comic-Con this week. We'll know soon enough exactly what kind of movie we're in for here.

It's hard to remember in these days of
comic book movies being all the rage, but the state of the big studio
summer blockbuster was pretty dire before movies like Blade, X-Men
and Spider-Man changed the game. For every Independence Day we get a
dozen Dante's Peaks.

Enough time has passed that it's
strangely nostalgic to see a traditional big, goofy disaster movie
again. Skyscraper is by no measure a serious attempt at drama, but
it's not trying to be. All it wants to do is entertain you by
throwing one of the most charismatic action stars in history into
increasingly ridiculous set pieces as he has to scale a burning
building to rescue his family. If you can accept it on its own level
you should be able to have some fun with it.

In terms of scripting it's a great
example of set up and pay off. In fact you could almost call
Skyscraper Chekhov's Gun: The Movie.

If you're unfamiliar with the term,
Chekhov's Gun simply means if you show a gun a wall at the beginning
of a story by the end of that gun better have gone off. It's a
storytelling principle that is in place so writers don't promise
things they don't deliver on.

The first act of Skyscraper is all
about showing us stuff that pays off later. We're walked through this
magnificent high tech tower in Hong Kong called The Pearl and things
big and small are set up to be revisited later, from giant wind
turbines to a garden section in the middle to even a sword hanging on
the wall of the CEO's penthouse apartment.

While the script, written by director
Rawson Marshall Thurber, won't be winning any awards it's tighter
than you'd expect and does right by its lead characters. Yes, there's
Dwayne Johnson's one-legged security specialist Will Sawyer who is
instantly likable and heroic and all that, but there's also his wife,
Sarah, played by Neve Campbell, who skirts the typical damsel in
distress trope. She's always proactive from scene one and nobody's
victim. She's smart, kind, supportive, instantly catches on that
something's wrong and calmly goes about finding a way out for her and
her children. In any other big blockbuster type movie she'd just be
waiting for the hero to come rescue her, but not here. It's a welcome
breath of fresh air and Neve Campbell gives it her all.

Johnson is his typical bundle of
muscle, sweat and charm. Gotta hand it to The Rock. That dude never
phones in a performance, which is crucial when you're dealing with a
story as silly as this. You want to see The Rock trying to jump into
a fiery building from a construction crane.

Skyscraper really is The Towering
Inferno mixed with Die Hard, but leans more towards Towering Inferno
than you may think.

Despite what the many sequels try to
tell you, the original Die Hard worked because Bruce Willis was an
everyman, not an action hero. Willis has taken the mantle of the
action star post-Die Hard, but you have to remember up to that point
he was a comedic romantic leading man, famous mostly for his
quick-witted banter with Cybill Shepherd on Moonlight. He wasn't a
muscle-bound action hero, he was just a dude who got hurt and didn't
just shrug off his injuries.

That's not what Skyscraper is. It is
physically impossible to make The Rock an everyman, and that's a
compliment to the hardest working man in show business. Seeing him
kick ass is why people buy tickets to his movies. He's more in the
Schwarzenegger mold than early Willis and he uses that to his
advantage every time out, especially in last year's Jumanji: Welcome
to the Jungle where his perfectly sculpted body was the central joke.

In short, Skyscraper delivers on what
it promises. I doubt it'll ever be anybody's favorite movie, but it's
an audience pleaser and never gets boring, which is the worst sin a
movie like this could commit

There was a massive shift in Disney's release schedule today. Most of these new dates affect movies still in development, so don't worry. Avengers 4, Captain Marvel, Episode IX, Frozen 2 and all those are still coming when you expect them.

Most of the moves are earlier than previously announced, the one exception being a big year push for Indiana Jones 5. Originally slated for 7/10/2020 the movie will now come out 7/09/2021. It makes sense, especially with the news that Solo's Jon Kasdan was reportedly doing a big rewrite after Spielberg regular David Koepp had his shot at the script.

It's a bummer, but as long as they get it right and wash away the taste of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull they can take as much time as they need.

Mary Poppins Returns moves up a week from December 25th to December 19th, The Rock's Jungle Cruise movie will release October 11th, 2019, Maleficent 2 will hit theaters May 29th, 2020 and an Untitled Marvel movie moves from July 30th, 2021 to February 12th, 2021.

It's a good bet that the Untitled Marvel movie will be a Black Panther sequel since it's moving from a coveted summer slot to February, which was very, very good to the first Black Panther film, but that's just a guess.

So that's the big update. Still can't wait for Spielberg and Harrison Ford's final outing with Dr. Jones. Call me an optimist if you want, but I have a good feeling that they'll knock it out of the park.

It's an interesting time for Marvel
right now. We're smack dab in the middle of a changing of the guard.
Many of the cornerstone characters aren't expected to make it out of
the still untitled Avengers 4 while the newer, more fun characters
like Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Guardians of the Galaxy and
Ant-Man are going to be shouldering the weight of the MCU going
forward.

There's two movies between Infinity War
and whatever its sequel will be called: Ant-Man and the Wasp and
Captain Marvel. Infinity War is the culmination of 10 years of Marvel
cinematic storytelling and, as such, the film has a weight to it.
Yes, people die and there are massive stakes, but even more than that
the film has to shoulder an epic scope worthy of being the endgame of
10 years of tentpole filmmaking.

So when I say that Ant-Man and the Wasp
is a step back into a more innocent MCU style it's not a
condemnation. It's a little refreshing, actually. The stakes here are
personal and once again rooted in family. It's not the end of the
world if Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne fail, but the emotional stakes
are just as high for the characters.

Ant-Man and the Wasp checks off all the
MCU boxes. Young-ified actors in an opening flashback? Check. Goofy
leading man? Got it. Light-hearted action scenes? Yeppers. Sons and
daughters with mommy and/or daddy issues? All of it.

The movie begins with Scott Lang on
house arrest for helping out Captain America in Civil War. He's at
the end of his two year sentence, just days away from having his
ankle bracelet removed and being able to leave the confines of his
admittedly very nice house. He can finally be a full father to his
daughter and put his life of crime and crime-fighting behind him.

Of course that's now how things play
out. He's pulled into another adventure by Dr. Hank Pym and his
daughter, Hope, and has to dodge his strangely nice FBI handler
(played by the hugely likable Randall Park), keep ahead of a
charismatic crime boss (Walton Goggins) and somehow fight a
mysterious masked stranger who can phase in and out of reality
(Hannah John-Kamen).

Scott has some vital information that
may save the original Wasp from the Quantum Realm, but is up against
too much to face alone. There's not really a whole lot of resistance
from him about teaming up with the Wasp, but that's okay. It fits his
character and it's kind of nice to see a guy accept a strong female
partner pretty much right off the bat instead of having to
dramatically cope with his vision of his masculinity under threat.

Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are just
as strong together in costume as they were as normal people in the
first movie and Lilly in particular gets a lot of time in the
spotlight here. She's way more proactive, pushing the narrative as
she desperately tries to save her mother. Because Scott has to stay
hidden or risk losing his family there's a story reason for Wasp to
be the face of the fight and their main villain is powerful enough to
warrant the tag team action.

I found Ghost to be interesting, but a
two-dimensional (yuk-yuk-yuk). Her character is tortured, in pain,
and just wants to find a solution to her problem. That solution lies
in Pym's tech and she doesn't care who she has to hurt (or even kill)
to save her own skin. That's very rich, fertile ground, but just as
soon as they introduce her they throw her out of the narrative for a
full act. When she comes back into the fray she's almost cartoonishly
villainous.

That's not a knock on Hannah
John-Kamen's performance. She gives it her all and you can feel a
character in pain in every moment of her screen time, but she's let
down a little bit by the script.

Speaking of there's a whole lot of
telling instead of showing going on here. There are multiple moments
where characters have long speeches telling you exactly who they are
or exactly what they're doing. It effectively gets that information
across, but it feels a little lazy to me. I much prefer finding out
these details through the story unfolding instead of being told
everything right up front.

The funny thing is they make a joke out
of this exact kind of monologuing early on with Randall Park's
character, but then they proceed to actually do it right afterwards!
It's like they were apologizing in advance for the shortcuts they
were about to take.

On a technical side this feels more
fully a Peyton Reed joint. You can still feel some of Edgar Wright's
fingerprints on the first movie, but this one is totally Reed and
Paul Rudd. The goofy stuff is at the forefront (I mean, you saw the
giant ant playing drums in the trailer, right?) and the action scenes
are fun, but a bit on the standard side. The focus instead is on
character emotion and making damn sure you have a good, light, fun
time at the movies.

That's not a bad thing, but if you
don't find yourself automatically on the Marvel train then you
probably aren't going to love this one. On the other hand, if you're
down with the MCU then you'll enjoy yourself here.

Once again Michael Peña and Scott's
ragtag friends steal the show. Peña has so much heart and childlike
awe and wonder that it can't help but infect the audience with his
positivity. Both TI and David Dastmalchian get expanded roles, too,
and are so fun together that I'd totally watch a movie of just those
guys running a security company as all the superhero shit goes down
off-screen.

Laurence Fishburne and Michelle
Pfeiffer are good additions to this universe. Pfeiffer gets to be
pretty badass but doesn't have a whole lot to do just yet.
Fishburne's character's troubled history with Hank Pym is some of my
favorite new stuff added in this film. Bill Foster has a solid moral
compass, but has also been harboring resentment towards Pym for
decades. Again, nice rich character detail but it's pretty background
stuff.

I don't know what it says about the
movie that some of its flaws is that there's way too much good stuff
in there that I wanted to see more of. If Walton Goggins had 20
minutes more screentime I wouldn't have been upset about that,
either.

At the end of the day, this flick is
fun and adds a few more shades to the MCU. That's all it wants to do
and it delivers. It'll be a good test to see if audiences on the
whole reject a return to a more slight, character-focused version of
an MCU movie or if post-Infinity War they will only accept huge
superhero movies with 17 characters on screen at any given time. I
have a feeling it's the former, but we'll soon see.

All I know is I
liked it and feel good recommending it to people. It won't change
your life, but you won't feel ripped off paying for a ticket to see
this one big.

As you probably know by now, I adore
Hereditary. I love, love, love, love that movie. I love how fucked up
it is, I love writer/director Ari Aster's attention to detail, both
visual and character-wise, I love the pacing, tone and acceleration
into madness and I love how it has absolutely wrecked both audiences
I've seen it with now.

None of that would be possible without
a kickass cast and while everybody shines this movie really boils
down to Toni Collette and Alex Wolff for me. They get put through
hell here and both absolutely shine in their roles.

So you can imagine I was super psyched
to get to talk with Alex Wolff about the making of this movie. The
dude started off a Nickelodeon kid actor and has graduated to this
incredibly complex, unquestionably fucked up role of a lifetime.

I think we did a pretty good job of
avoiding spoilers, so you should be free and clear on that front.
Wolff was a very fun and funny interview, as you'll see by our very
first interaction. He also proved to be a real-deal cinephile and
actually knew his shit, which is refreshing when you're talking to
someone so young.

Enjoy the chat!

Alex Wolff: Hey, Eric.

Eric Vespe: Hey, man. How're you doing?

Alex Wolff: I'm good, I'm good. I'm in
the middle of a junket and I'm looking at some pretty delicious
breakfast, but I'm not going to be eating on the phone with you, so
I'm just staring at it and it really, really looks good. Just know
that's how much I care about you that I'm not just stuffing bacon
into my mouth because it looks so good and if I have one bite that'll
be it... Okay, I am going to eat it. I'm sorry. I care about you,
but it looks too goddamn good.

Eric Vespe: That's okay. I ask some
pretty long-winded questions so there's plenty of chewing time to be
had.

Alex Wolff: Okay, great!

Eric Vespe: So, your character is put
through some crazy stuff in this movie...

Alex Wolff: Yeah, no shit!

Eric Vespe: Everybody goes through hell
in this movie, but your character in particular is put through the
ringer. I'd like to start by asking how you emotionally prepare for a
role like this. I assume it's not as easy as just turning it on in
front of the camera and turning it off when they yell cut. There's
got to be some ramp up and cool down to go to the places that you go
in this movie.

Alex Wolff: Oh yeah. I think it's safe
to say that I was deeply, deeply, deeply affected by every single
moment that this character goes through. I kind of stayed in that
space for the whole movie, so I left the movie with a little PTSD. It
was a serious feat and a serious trauma. I feel super lucky that I
got to do it, but it was definitely an upsetting thing to go through.
Me and the director, Ari, had this sort of pact. We were like
“Alright, let's both get into a kamikaze plane and crash into the
ground. We'll both jump into the fire together and we'll both get
burned and then we'll help lift each other up afterwards.” We had
this very close, familial relationship throughout the movie.

Eric Vespe: There's a scene in the
movie I want to talk about. I was already onboard with this film, but
there's a moment that happens about halfway through the movie where I
went from just digging the movie to being fully invested and it's a
moment that rests almost solely on a close up on you reacting to
something horrific. How much pressure did that put on you? You have
to do so much and there's no place for you to hide.

Alex Wolff: Thank you so much, man.

Eric Vespe: I think this moment really
sets the movie on track for the craziness that follows and you sell
it. Did you know all the time that Ari was going to milk your
reaction as much as he did?

Alex Wolff: I knew when I saw the
movie. I didn't know. There were a lot of other things we did, but he
chose to stay on that shot for so long. I'm glad because I gave it
everything I had.

It's one of those things that's hard to
talk about. I just want people to see it for themselves. It was
really upsetting to shoot. It's funny, we did that angle and I
remember crying and sweating and Ari was hugging me. I thought I was
done and I went back to the trailer, thinking it was over, and they
were like “Actually, we're going to do one more. We're going to do
a different shot.” I was like “Jesus Christ” So I had to get
back into it. He used that, too. It's all in one close up, but he
does use this one shot that's a little further back that is pretty
upsetting, too.

I just feel lucky that I have a
director who trusted me enough as an actor that he'd hold it on my
face. I really think Ari is a genius. He knows what he's doing.

Eric Vespe: I got to talk to him a
little bit...

Alex Wolff: He's not a genius at
interviews! But he's a genius at directing. (laughs)

Eric Vespe: He said something really
interesting about the influences he had for the movie, which were
more '50s and '60s melodramas instead of horror. Did he give you any
homework when you got the part? Any particular films he wanted you to
watch?

Alex Wolff: I'm a pretty big cinephile,
so I take pride in the fact that there weren't many movies that he
suggested that I hadn't seen, but there were some. I'd never seen In
the Bedroom and I'd never seen The Ice Storm. He's also obsessed with
Wong Kar-Wai and stuff, but those two movies he told me to watch
them.

Actually, no. I'd seen The Ice Storm
before. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I watched it two or
three times while making the movie and I watched In the Bedroom a few
times. I'd just be keeping these movies on repeat. He's seen every
single goddamn movie on planet Earth. I consider myself a pretty big
cinephile and I've seen so many movies, but man, this motherfucker
gave me a run for my money.

Eric Vespe: As a cinephile working with
a fellow cinephile I would assume that helps strengthen the trust
between you two and would give you some cinematic shorthand.

Alex Wolff: Absolutely. A hundred
percent. That was part of our initial connection and knowing we were
on the same page with this movie.

Eric Vespe: Did he bring any of that
into the direction? Like “This is how this moment should be played,
just like this moment in Hitchcock's Psycho.” That kind of thing.

Alex Wolff: I remember one time he
compared a moment to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. He would
sometimes bring references in, but he really wanted me to craft my
own performance and he really wanted to craft his own movie. As much
as we were inspired by other movies we never wanted to imitate other
movies. We wanted to create our own thing. But it's really Ari, man.
Ari's got a specific vision. He's a genius.

Oh, and Chinatown. Chinatown was one we
talked about All. The. Time.

Eric Vespe: I like all the films you
mentioned. There's such dark tones to The Ice Storm and Chinatown.

Alex Wolff: Yeah, we never really
talked about horror movies.

Eric Vespe: Can you talk a little about
the script? Was everything on the page? Did you know what you were in
for from day one?

Alex Wolff: I thought it was a great
script, but I didn't quite know how uniquely it was going to be shot.
I read the script a bunch of times. I read it about a year before I
went in for it. I read it and I was like “This script is
unbelievable.” I was terrified. It left a bad feeling in my
stomach. At the end of reading it the first time my mom walked into
my bedroom and I screamed out loud. It scared the shit out of me!

I thought it was a unique, interesting
script. Then I went in to audition for it and I had to break down and
cry and all this stuff and the way he worked with actors... I was
like “Okay, this is an amazing script, a delicate, intricate,
specific script, with a director who cares about actors and knows how
to work with actors.” Then I got on set and was like “Okay, this
is a genius script where people talk how people actually talk. I have
a director who is making sure the performances are grounded AND this
camera shit he's doing is some of the craziest shit I've ever seen.”
It felt like a triple punch. He knew exactly what he was doing in
every sense of the word.

Eric Vespe: Nice, so there was no first
time feature filmmaker fear on your part, then?

Alex Wolff: Well, I had a little bit of
fear. This was a pretty big movie, a pretty crazy stunt to pull off
for a first time director, so I was testing him and making sure. That
scene where I'm under the bleachers is the moment I hold dearest to
my heart and I was like “Hey, man. What do I do?” He was like “I
think you should just have a panic attack.” That's awesome. It's a
good way of saying it. “Just have a panic attack.”

Eric Vespe: Thanks so much for your
time. Hopefully you were able to sneak some bites of breakfast while
we were talking!

Alex Wolff: Thank you so much, Eric.
I'll talk to you soon.

Hereditary opens this Friday. Go see it! Bring an extra set of underwear. You'll need it...

Hereditary is by far the most effective
horror movie in recent memory. The downright creepy atmosphere gets
under your skin, the tone lodges itself into your brain and sticks
with you for days after seeing it and it will just generally kinda
fuck you up for a while after seeing it.

Who could be behind this
extraordinarily macabre vision? A dark, brooding figure that lurks in
the shadows, perhaps. Or maybe the kind of guy with sallow skin that
you imagine has a basement full of amateur taxidermy.

The reality is Ari Aster seems to be a
normal dude. He looks like your next door neighbor or the enthusiast
geeky cousin you had who will talk your ear off about classic cinema,
whether you want them to or not.

In person Aster is a shy, humble guy
who seems a little surprised that people actually liked his movie. I
saw him “Aw, shucks” his way through the Sundance Q&A after
the premiere of this film back in January and that's how he came
across when I got the chance to talk to him over the phone.

He's also a major cinephile, so when
the topic of influences comes up he has some very surprising answers.
You'd think stuff like The Omen or Rosemary's Baby would be his
keystone inspirations for this project, but you'd be mistaken.

We keep the chat fairly spoiler-free,
so don't worry about us ruining the experience. You do want to go
into the film knowing as few of the surprises as possible, though.
Aster talks about using your expectations against you in this movie
and he ain't lyin'. There's some good “What the fuck!?!” moments
to be had in this one.

Enjoy the chat!

Eric Vespe: We haven't had a chance to
meet yet, but I was in that very first Sundance screening of
Hereditary where you scared the shit out of everybody for the first
time. So, thanks for that.

Ari Aster: Oh, wow. No, thank you!

Eric Vespe: The amazing thing about a
film festival that you don't get in today's movie-release world is
that you can walk into a film completely blind. I can't tell you how
much I loved being a part of that audience as we discovered your
movie. Did you watch it that night or are you the kind of filmmaker
that can't watch their stuff with a crowd?

Ari Aster: That screening and the
second screening I sat through. The first one there was a speaker
down in the back of the theater, so I was actually having an extended
panic attack through that screening. (laughs)

But yeah, that was a great night. When
you're in post on a movie like this you get so lost in the minutiae
of just making the film and you forget what you made or what you're
even trying to make or what steps you're going for on the audience.
Especially since a horror film is all about audience engagement. But I'd honestly forgotten I'd even
made a horror movie. At the end of the day you're just trying to make
a movie that works, you know?

Eric Vespe: Yeah, I remember at the Q&A
you seemed surprised that the audience kept asking you about how you
made the movie so damn creepy.

Ari Aster: I was! I was! That night the
prevailing feeling was one of release. “They didn't hate it!
Great!” The next night we had a screening at the MARC theater,
which was even bigger and all the speakers were working beautifully
and I was past the fear of people hating it. It was really beautiful.
The audience was going with the film, they were feeling it, it was
effecting them.

It was also a bit surprising to see how
well people were receiving it because ultimately the goal was to make
a very alienating, upsetting movie. So it's been a nice surprise to
see people are embracing this, like, kind of evil thing.

Eric Vespe: You do something with tone
that I think so many people who make scary movies don't do. A lot of
people want to make fun horror movies, not a lot seem to want to make
an upsetting horror movie. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the
key to your success here is you take an old school Rosemary's Baby
style approach to this where you focus on character drama first and
foremost.

Ari Aster: Thank you, yeah. I did want
to go the way of the long, deliberate runway. I wanted to make a film
that was grounded in a place of character and let everything grow out
of that. When I was pitching the film I was never pitching it as a
horror film. I do hope it delivers as a horror film, but the way I
was pitching it was always as a family tragedy that warps into a
nightmare.

I wanted it to feel like a nightmare in
the way that life can sometimes feel like a nightmare when real
disaster strikes. In that way, I feel like the film is as much of a
melodrama as much as it is a horror film. I like horror movies, but I
love melodramas! In the melodramatic tradition, the movie
sympathetically attaches itself to these people and what they're
going through. It tries to honor the feelings by going all the way
into them. I wanted to make a film that collapses under the weight of
what these people are going through. I wanted the fabric of the film
to tear open because it's so full of toxic, unresolvable feelings.

Eric Vespe: It's funny that you mention
melodrama because there was a film that your movie reminded me of a
little bit, but I didn't think it was at all intentional and it was
just me connecting dots that weren't there. It's a great Technicolor
melodrama called Bigger Than Life with James Mason...

Ari Aster: I love Bigger Than Life!
Nicholas Ray.

Eric Vespe: That movie is not at all
genre, but it has a disturbing tone to it, too, as we see a family
breaking down before our eyes.

Ari Aster: I can't say I was thinking
about Bigger Than Life for this one, but I love Bigger Than Life and
the films of Nicholas Ray are kind of in my bones at this point just
because I grew up loving them so much.

I think, if anything, this film owes
something of a debt to Douglas Sirk, especially Imitation of Life,
which has a lot in common with Mildred Pierce in that it's a movie
about your child turning on you, but this film also plays a lot with
the idea of your parent turning on you.

But Sirk has always bothered me. What
he does with color, his sets are so artificial and garish... he was
really brilliant. When I think of the end of Imitation of Life, where
there's this funeral parade in the streets where everybody is dressed
in these really bright pastel colors... there's something so perverse
about that. There this incongruity to the images and what he's doing.
He's doing two things at once that really have no business with each
other.

I first saw those films when I was a
kid and I couldn't make sense of them. They confused me. They really
got to me. Now I have a stronger visual vocabulary and I can see what
he's doing, but the perversity of those films still really ticks at
me.

Eric Vespe: Those films really push
their actors. James Mason in Bigger Than Life really goes for it as
his character's fragile mental state cracks and shatters. He goes
into some really dark places. That's the connection I made to your
movie. You put poor Toni Collette and Alex Wolff through the ringer
in this movie. How did your cast respond to you pushing them so far?

Ari Aster: They were all very game, so
I was lucky to have actors who were willing to go all the way and
dive into this. It's a very intense movie and I was asking them to go
to very dark places. To everyone's credit in the film nobody was
holding anything back.

The film is dealing a lot with
catharsis. There are all these things being built up and built up and
built up and then finally there's this upsetting release.

Eric Vespe: That's a great way to put
it. At that Sundance screening I remember looking at the people
around me in that last 20 minutes and everybody was transfixed on the
screen, not blinking. They were so into it. That kind of audience
involvement gets me excited to watch the movie again with a new
crowd.

Ari Aster: That's one reason that I
really love genre, especially the horror genre, because there are
these expectations and tropes. Once you introduce one trope it lulls
people into their seats. Most of the people who are in that theater
are people who watch horror movies. If you're somebody who really
likes horror movies you're aware of all the sub-categories and you're
aware of what this device means. So, if this device appears that
suggests we're going in this direction.

There's a complacency that comes with
watching a horror film. At the same time people are walking in and
there's this mutual dare. The filmmaker is daring you to come in and
the audience is daring the filmmaker to try to scare them. There's
something very fun about establishing tropes that people recognize. I
think the first third of the movie does do that. It's sort of nodding
towards certain films and certain traditions and I'm hoping what it
does then is it upends them in a brutal way. If you do that right it
kind of shocks you out of your complacency.

I'm always so excited when I'm watching
a film and I think I know where it's going and then I suddenly
realize that I'm not in control of this experience. I'm really hoping
that, if anything, the movie does that.

Eric Vespe: I can't speak for
everybody, but that's certainly the effect that it had on me. You're
right, when you're not sure what's coming next you feel strangely
vulnerable.

Ari Aster: Thank you. It's the Psycho
thing, right? We're with Janet Leigh, she's stolen the money and I'm
sure people are a little bit weary because they know the movie's
called “Psycho” if they're seeing it for the first time in 1960,
but we're with her. She's stolen the money, but she's decided to
bring it back. She's learned her lesson. Okay. We're with her, we
like her and then she's stabbed to death in the shower. Now what?

I'm hoping that Hereditary does
something similar to that where there's a kind of shared trauma among
the audience that then joins you to the experience of the characters
in the film. If you have that complacency that I'm talking about
where you sink into a movie and you know this trope and you know this
device and you watch it at a distance, where the audience is kind of
elevated above the material and they're looking down at it and
they're judging it from a more clinical place. But if you a delivered
a blow that is tied to the blow that the characters in the film
suffer that, I hope, brings you back down to the plane of the movie
and hopefully you're in it now. Hopefully now you're at the film's
mercy.

There's a lot of good genre on the way.
Next week sees one of the best horror films of the year, Hereditary,
hitting theater screens and this weekend we have a straight up fun
sci-fi action/body horror movie called Upgrade. The movie's about a
guy who is paralyzed and used as a guinea pig by an eccentric Elon
Musk type that claims his new AI can help paraplegics walk again.
Naturally there's unseen consequences to this decision, including a
kind of Gollum/Smeagol relationship that forms between the lead and
the computer voice in his head.

The movie was written and directed by
Leigh Whannell, one of the masterminds behind the original Saw and
Insidious. Upgrade is crazy, playing like a real-deal movie version
of the best '90s direct to VHS movie you never saw. It's fun, but not
stupid if you catch my drift.

There's a clear sense of Whannell
channeling some of his cinematic fetishes into this story, so when I
had the chance to talk to him about it that's what we focus on. We
discuss the evolution of his movie tastes and how that mirrored my
own. In short, it's a chat that movie geeks can relate to. If that
sounds like you, then enjoy yourself!

Eric Vespe: Everybody who is a big
movie fan has that core group of movies or a particular genre that
they loved growing up. What were yours?

Leigh Whannell: I guess it went in
stages. It depends at which age you'd ask me. When I was 5 or 6 I was
your pretty typical Star Wars kid, loving Star Wars, watching a VHS
copy of that until it was completely worn out. Raiders of the Lost
Ark... But actually my favorite film of that era was Jaws. Even more
than Star Wars! I guess that maybe signposts an early love of horror,
but I just loved Jaws so much. I was obsessed with movies.

As I got a bit older and was in my
early teens I was basically loving video store staples. I grew up in
the outer suburbs of Melbourne. It was very suburban and I wasn't
deviating from the standard Die Hard/RoboCop/Lethal Weapon path. My
parents weren't forcing me to watch Last Year at Marienbad, that's
for sure. (laughs)

Through my teen years I loved genre
films... horror films, sci-fi, stuff like Aliens. Then when I got
into film school, that's when your palate gets expanded. All of a
sudden you're watching foreign films you don't have access to in the
suburbs of Melbourne. My local video store wasn't stocking Wim
Wenders films! It's almost like A Clockwork Orange. They sit you in a
chair and forcibly make you watch all this stuff from all over the
world, from different time periods. I'd say that was the final
evolution with me, in terms of my taste in films.

It's amazing, though, that as an adult,
the films that I go back to are the ones I loved as a teenager. It's
almost like comfort food for my soul. To sit down and watch Big
Trouble In Little China, for me, is such comfort food.

Eric Vespe: I know what you mean. There
are certain films that are “Any Time Movies.” No matter what mood
you're in... if you're down, they'll bring you up, if you're happy
they'll just magnify that. Big Trouble is definitely one of those.
Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Big Lebowski, Little Shop of Horrors
are big ones for me.

Leigh Whannell: Yep, yep. There's just
a few that no matter will just put you there. E.T. is one for me. I
can keep going back to E.T.

Eric Vespe: I think anybody who's a big
movie fan will recognize that trajectory. I remember I took a film
appreciation class at UT and while I dabbled in older cinema that's
where I really became obsessed with it. The professor showed us
Sunset Boulevard and it blew my mind. It got me to commit to
exploring older films.

Leigh Whannell: Yeah, I think you're
right. You have these watershed moments. I guess it's similar with
music. Your music tastes evolve as you get older and you end up
having these seminal moments when you're exposed to something that
changes the trajectory of your musical tastes. And that happens with
movies.

I was not deviating from the standard
Die Hard path. All the suburban kids around me where I grew up, they
loved Die Hard, too. They loved The Crow and Lethal Weapon and all
this standard Hollywood action stuff, but I remember... I think it
was my last year of high school, I ended up renting Reservoir Dogs on
VHS and that was definitely a watershed moment. It was a huge moment.
It stood out and marked itself as more special, somehow, than those
other movies, those standard Hollywood action movies of the '80s and
'90s.

I remember being excited about that
film in a way that I hadn't been about other films. You're right. You
can always look back and map out these points... they're kind of like
the Monolith in 2001. They come to visit the monkeys every hundred
years and shove us into the future.

Reservoir Dogs was definitely a black
Monolith in the desert for me. It started me investigating movies in
a different way. Instead of caring about who was in the movie, I
wanted to know who was making the movie; who was behind the camera.
That's not something I thought up prior to Reservoir Dogs.

I remember in that moment in time, with
Tarantino, suddenly being a filmmaker was cool. It wasn't about being
the movie star. In fact, I'd say that Tarantino was a much bigger
star than any of this cast members.

These all add up to a picture when you
stand back and look at them.

Eric Vespe: Yep. That era was full of
that phenomenon. You had Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith as well,
who were more famous than most of the name actors in their movies.

Leigh Whannell: Exactly.

Eric Vespe: I have a similar story...
The short version is a friend of the family was a big movie nerd, so
she'd take me out to see movies every weekend. She liked all sorts of
movies, I was definitely more interested in genre. Kenneth Branagh's
Frankenstein had just come out and I wanted to see that. She said
she'd take me to that if I'd go see this John Travolta movie after. I
saw Frankenstein and hated it. I was fuming because the movie I
wanted to see sucked and now I had to go see this stupid art house
movie with the guy from Look Who's Talking in it. That one was, of
course, Pulp Fiction.

Leigh Whannell: (laughs) That's such a
good consolation prize!

Eric Vespe: Within the first five
minutes of that movie my world had changed. There was something so
different about film. It legitimately blew the doors open for me.

Leigh Whannell: People really propagate
the mythology of the cinema of the '70s, that auteur era with Francis
Coppola and William Friedkin and Steven Spielberg, but for people my
age the '90s were really that moment. All of a sudden you cared about
movies in a different way. Even the biggest redneck living in my
suburban neighborhood had copies of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack!
That's something that would not have happened prior to that film. It
was such an explosion in the culture that it seeped out to the people
who normally wouldn't care about stuff like that. Even my mum knows
who Quentin Tarantino is, which is pretty amazing because I doubt she
could name any other film directors. It was a huge time, an exciting time.

Eric Vespe: What I liked about Upgrade
is that feels like a throwback film. The world is over the top, it
has some ridiculous conceits in it, but you as a filmmaker takes it
seriously, which I think is the magic formula of making a movie fun.
I see a lot of movies that are super serious, I see a lot of movies
that are super silly. I don't see a lot of people striving for that
balance. Can you talk a little about hitting that tricky balance and
maybe how some of the stuff you loved growing up fed into that?

Leigh Whannell: Well, I'm definitely
influenced by those films that I mentioned growing up. I always loved
contained sci-fi and movies with a dark, film noir bent to them,
especially if they incorporated sci-fi. If you look back at the first
Terminator film, it's kind of a mixture between a horror film, a film
noir, set in the alleyways of Los Angeles and a sci-fi movie, but
it's got this punk energy to it.

Sometimes they're very literal about
those things. For instance, the first group of guys that the
Terminator kills is a group of punks. The nightclub where Sarah
Connor hides out is called Tech Noir. I've read plenty of stuff about
that movie and James Cameron always coined the genre that way. He
thought he was making a tech noir film.

One could look at as a marketing
gimmick, but it's something he really bought into. You can't help
what you love and I've always just loved that. I love movies that
leave you with something, movies that aspire to change your
perception of story. I guess I'm trying to dance around the word
“gimmick.” It's such a dirty word, but I get really excited by
“gimmick movies.”

When I first saw Memento I loved it.
The whole gimmick of that movie playing backwards was exciting to me.
I loved Run, Lola, Run and the gimmick of seeing the same story play
out three times. Of course it has to be a good movie. You can't let
the gimmick itself sell the movie. You have to make a good film, but
I don't see anything wrong with a gimmick.

I love movies that try to push the
genre they're working in and frame the narrative in an interesting
way, whether it's playing it out backwards or repeating the same
story three times. I've always kind of written to that. Even the
first Saw movie was a non-linear film. I wanted to tell a thriller
that was out of order, that felt like you were waking up from being
unconscious and were remembering things.

Upgrade was kind of that to me. Some
may look at it and sneer and say “What did you think was
interesting about this?” But to me the idea of a character in a
movie that was purely a voice in a guy's head... I found that really
interesting. I feel like you always end up writing the movie you want
to see and I feel like if I was 20 years old I would want to see
Upgrade. That's a movie that's framed in a way that would excite me.
That's what I'm always striving for. I want to satisfy the 20 year
old movie-going version of me.

Eric Vespe: I think you do a good job
with that here, for sure. Even people that I've seen that didn't love
the movie all say “If I'd seen this when I was 15 it would have
been my favorite movie ever!”

Leigh Whannell: (Laughs) I've seen a
lot of reviews of this movie that are positive. I've lost count of
the ones that say “It's silly. It's dumb fun, but it's great!”
I'm like, “I thought when I made a film that good reviews the
reviews would actually be good!”

Leigh Whannell: Yeah. My cheek is just
red and stinging from the amount of backhanded compliments I've
received on this one, but what're you going to do? Once the movie
leaves your hands it's not yours anymore and you can't control the
perception of it. You just let it go.

Eric Vespe: Awesome, man. I appreciate
you taking the time to talk to me. Good luck with the release!

Leigh Whannell: Thank you, mate. I
appreciate it!

Upgrade is in theaters this weekend!
Give it a shot if you like fun things!

Questions answered by ericvespe

I curate a pretty solid Twitter stream filled with entertainment reporters, aggregators, actors, directors, producers and just plain ol' cinephiles. That means there's commentary for just about every bit of news that comes down the pipe. I also check out the scoopers regularly. Deadline, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, etc.

Good luck on the director goal. It's a lot of work, but if you've got stories to tell then you're in the right field!

This is an excellent question. Do you go by design? Quality of the movie or series they're in? Lasting chills? Design would be between Predator, Pumpkinhead and Gill-Man from Monster Squad (all created by the late, great Stan Winston, by the way). I watched more Friday the 13th movies growing up than I did Nightmare on Elm Street, but I like the character of Freddy more, especially in that first film and Dream Warriors. It might not be the most original answer, but I'd probably go with Freddy.

Absolutely not. That's what being a geek is all about. I can't tell you how many cool, random, weird movies I've found while chasing down movies with favorite character actors in it or directed by people I dig. That's the fun of all this!

Honestly (and I know this makes me sound like a politician, but it's true) I love all kinds of movies. It's hard for me to pick between Jaws and Casablanca or The Exorcist and Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Lord of the Rings and The Godfather. I definitely have a soft spot for horror and sci-fi and I'm usually more willing to give a new random horror flick a shot over some drama I've never heard about.